Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caKf2bEphfQ
[Music] don fry it's a goddamn honor and a pleasure hey partner thank you you know like i said earlier first time first only time we met i insulted you i don't remember that it's down there in alabama right that was the early days yeah number 12. oh ufc 12. that was my first one yeah what'd you say well we were backstage and you know they introduced us and this is you know do you know who this guy is they said and says yeah he plays that real dumb guy on on the news radio show you look so insulted you look so hurt then i find out i find out you know your character is really actually part of who you are and that's part of the problem it's very it was very close to who i am unfortunately i've been watching you and you're a smart bastard man i'm impressed i have a good memory i'm not that smart but i have a good memory you know what that was going on a lot of stuff i know some things some things the bob lazar stuff oh that's impressive are you interested in ufos oh yeah yeah a lot of folks in arizona are interested in ufos they visit there quite a bit yeah it seems like yeah there's a the house that i have um it was built i guess the guy who built it uh built it so his wife could watch the ufos over at the mountain there wow that's a high maintenance lady here yeah yeah well they aren't imagine that what kind of house you want honey i want a house where i watch you have fouls i need an observation deck that's basically it it was it was like a bunker yeah half of it's in the ground and they have some and then all the block you know you get the big 16 bait block and they're all filled with cement a lot of weird houses like that there's a house for sale in arizona right now it used to be steven seagal's house it might still be his house he's selling it but it's bulletproof it's got bulletproof glass it's like a
compound that guy's a goof he's a silly man a [ __ ] goof beyonce he's a silly man he believes that [ __ ] you know who he is i don't know what he believes and what he's just bullshitting it's hard to tell you know oh you can't [ __ ] that good i mean he's a lousy actor he's a lousy actor how can you pretend to be that you know i mean that's his hustle right his hustle is that he's just like a martial arts guy but you know he's really good at aikido i'm sure you watch those demonstrations you know what if i get a couple pro wrestlers to be my my ukis you know they make me look like a million-dollar [ __ ] that's true that is that is what happens right they're all compliant don how did you when when did you you you started out was like ufc eight was that your first fight noah's first in ufc i fought before yeah i thought boxing and kickboxing before that right no kickboxing i did boxing um i think i had eight fights and um i think i was two and six or two five and one i don't know because i fought my first two is don fry and i won those and then i had an argument with my trainer and so we split and then so then i fought under j.r frye why'd you change the name well that was my name growing up as junior so j.r and that's how i was in you know junior high high school and then um you know what my dad mom called me and then i think i changed my name because of uh contractual you know oh you had some deal with the manager yeah right there's a lot of those sneaky deals huh yeah but um that was more the trainer and you know i don't know if that was because they were really good guys uh art marti was my money guy who you know they they the two munos mike munoz and his father al brought me to art art wrestled at asu back in the late 60s and art uh he's a billionaire you know and so he was
interested and i mean he he basically funds asu wrestling oh really yeah oh that's nice half his pocket yeah and he's done so much for amateur wrestling in the us i mean he's like the top dog because um he uh he used to have what's called sunkist wrestling team and uh so that was his baby and he steamrolled that and um then like i said uh the munos brothers sir mike and his dad took me to art or so i just give it a shot after he called um jeez the coach at oaky state um jose to double double check on me you know so did you started out wrestling did you wrestle as a young boy no sir when did you start wrestling uh as a freshman in high school and then when did you box uh when i got out of college oh so most of it was you know that's fairly late in life to box right oh yeah oh yeah that's why i was two and [Laughter] so when did you hear about the ufc um i was a fireman you know i just did the boxing and then got out did start doing odd jobs for you know a year year and a half and uh then my wife at that time we had a couple horses you know and being a colleague wrestler you got a bit of an eagle when you so i don't get well i could do that so uh stir going around with a farrier named stoney newfang and then stoney got me interested then i um got tired of that wasn't really making good money but you know for the time he's giving me five bucks a horse you know teach me you know pull the shoes um shape the shoe you know and all that good stuff well he he did the technical work on the hooves and then um i said you know somebody told me about being a fireman about you know working 10 days a month you know and wrestling i said hell
that's the job for me you know ten days a month i can do that you're doing the 24-hour shifts yeah stay there at the firehouse yeah yeah so i got on the phone called up all the cities in the city arizona nobody was hiring so i called up santa fe new mexico they said yeah we're gonna run a test and so i went over there and tested and passed the test and then i went to uh my buddy jerry packetball he's got me into wrestling um when i was in high school kevin you're later please thank him there you go i'll leave that over there sir bring your man yeah um so then i went and stayed at jerry's house in santa fe and i went through their i think it was like a six month or more um academy you know in the fire department yeah really six months yeah wow it was a hell of an academy it really was and so from there you thought about fighting no i had already fought no but i mean in the ufc oh no um from there we were there a year year and a half couldn't afford to live there you know you know in santa fe you're either real rich or real poor you know this is 30 years ago so i don't know how it is now but um probably similar probably like the whole country now right yeah it's supposed to be nice though santa fe a lot of people good friends from there beautiful yeah you never been no never been oh you gotta go i don't even think i've been in new mexico except driving through one really yeah where'd you drive through it i was a kid i don't remember it yeah yeah you didn't obviously you haven't gotten through see uh jon jones no no jackson winkle john i want to go down there and check out the gym though how come you have it she's just a busy man don fry just a busy man a lot of places i want to go yeah never been to north dakota either i have i bet you have yeah it's beautiful yeah
i don't know why i said north dakota i saw the i saw the lights man that was cool oh the northern lights yeah i want to see that oh they're just so cool yeah that's pretty wild yeah i did that um [ __ ] after i had my first neck surgery back in 2000 a buddy me and a couple buddies went uh did the amsterdam thing you know and that was real cool we saw the lights up there would you have done your neck you have refused yeah they've i've had broken it uh doing pro wrestling and worked on it for a year and a half not knowing you know jesus yeah and but i lost so much muscle in the in the right arm you know and um so that they fixed it and i had a really nice um i can't remember her name and i'm talking a lot i never talked this much that's what a podcast is all about joe i don't drink this much in a month man well we could take breaks we got the right combination of paint bills so um out of all the injuries that you ever got in your fighting career was the pro wrestling injuries the worst yeah yeah pro wrestling is probably one of the hardest things that a guy can do athletically yeah because those guys do it every [ __ ] night all the guys that i've had in here you know the undertaker uh diamond dallas paige all these guys like every one of them when they tell you their stories you go jesus christ jake the snake those guys are so banged up yeah i'm trying to get ric flair whoa i love rick i love rick working on a rick yeah oh he's a goddamn legend um so when you when you first heard about the ufc so you were a firefighter then or well back to the back to the yeah you know like i said we were in santa fe for a year year and a half and then couldn't afford to live there and uh so i got on the phone and said well [ __ ] you know we still had horses
and still paying farrier so well [ __ ] i could do that so i found oklahoma horseshoeing school in oaky city and so i moved my wife back home to my parents house you know and i went to oklahoma horseshoeing school for their 12-week program oh wow and so i did that and then when i came back to uh arizona sierra vista um hooked up with a guy named um oh jesus um tyler basinger tyler's a magician as a farrier just a magician and he paid me five dollars a horse you know and fed me lunch and uh and you know so i was learning how to shoe horses from him you know do an apprenticeship starting my own business i got on as a firefighter reserve you know a place called fry fire department fry no relation relations the old man uh had a outpost store outside of fort wachuka you know 150 years ago and also a whorehouse this is like old-school western [ __ ] yeah wow and so then i then i had some time i worked at a um psych facility too you know site facility psychological oh psychological facility yeah what'd you do there like restrained patients yeah yeah and what's harder horseshoeing or restraining patients well we're sure i broke a kid's arm so you know just the headlocks you know they they did a breakout where you know 20 or 30 of them run off and then you got to hurt them back in and really boy a couple of them act out and one of the guys had the kid restrained from he had him from behind had his arms pinned kids started slamming his head into his face so i just walked up to the headlock and we landed snapped his arm oh no yeah i kind of kind of put a damper on things yeah was that the end of your restraining patience so how does it make its way to the ufc do you remember when you found out about the ufc
yeah then i think that was still a year or two before so this is like 92 something like that yeah and then um i started doing judo you know because i needed you know i needed something to do you know right uh you know you're 22 24 years old you you know used to be a college athlete yeah you know you still walk around with an erection right i understand and um so i started doing judo and advanced really quickly in that and um you know so then then we're i got on the bisbee fire department in 94. arizona yeah yeah shout out to doug stanhope the king of bisbee yeah that's what i hear yeah i met him one time yeah yeah at the uh airport oh yeah yeah he says you're a firefighter it used to be this [ __ ] this was probably 15 18 years ago oh wow and um yeah we're the helen arena so you were talking about when you first heard about the ufc yeah 92 i got on with the bisbee fire right and then we were sitting there watching something on tv and saw dan clip a dan dance ever and then he was doing some kind of bodyguard work with um that gal who works [Applause] i'm bad at names i had a stroke you know a few years ago you did hemorrhagic stroke yeah after a surgery oh [ __ ] so i get lost sometimes um um [ __ ] me you can edit this yeah it doesn't matter anyway so dan was doing bodyguard work yeah for robin from um who's a radio guy in new york robin quivers yeah howard's turn right oh really no [ __ ] and it's a great t-shirt yeah wow everybody says susan's dancing with a great t-shirt and so they you know then we saw dan fight and i called him up and said [ __ ] you know i said dan don fry remember me yeah what are you doing is playing fireman playing a horseshoe you know can you say this ufc stuff can you get me in on it and he says yeah
so he ended up getting me some fights probably about five or six fights you know around the country and uh you know check's still in the mail you know um was this pre-ufc yeah yeah oh so you fought mma before the ufc oh it was it was warehouse fighting yeah mma isn't it right right so right and hp is what they called it back then yeah no holds barred right so you wear shoes you do whatever you want it was a bare knuckle yeah yeah in your day and even in the ufc eight it was you're still allowed to fight bare knuckle yeah yeah but i wore gloves because i hit heart yeah you know yeah and smart gloves are made to protect your face right they may protect my hands who's the first guy to wear gloves in the ufc was it tank yeah smart smart move he hits hard yeah holy [ __ ] i remember your fight with tank what a [ __ ] fight that was my god you know and they didn't make uh top 10 of the one-round fights oh i don't have no idea why it doesn't well it's because there's so many great fights it's arbitrary who makes top 10 but i think it should have been in there that was a classic nobody knows nobody knows anything about ufc 100 and b of war you know i do yeah they should go back because that's that's the history of the sport i always tell people we knew more about martial arts after four years of the ufc than it had been done in 400 years right we knew more we knew what worked and what didn't work we we saw so many different things so many different things like by the time 97 rolled around we they had figured out so first of all they realized wrestling is the most important thing yeah it's the most important thing so it's just like still to this like a street fight two and a half hours every day you know it really is it is yeah and it's just the ability to take a guy down if you look at uh somebody posted it it might have been adam hunter on his page i think it was on his
instagram page he posted uh the amount of champions per discipline you know it showed like uh jiu-jitsu kickboxing all the different and then wrestling it's number one right number one out of all the all the different disciplines that's the most important discipline well it's the hardest thing to do because yep there's i mean you're doing it every day in high school every day in college and there's no excuses and the most mentally tough too yeah because first of all they're cutting weight they're cutting weight the day of the event they're they're competing dehydrated and exhausted and wrestlers amongst all athletes that i've ever met take pride in being miserable yeah they really do yeah here it is it is adam adam hunter put it up there look at that 28 professional champions from wrestling the second place is brazilian jiu jitsu the third place is boxing and then kickboxing below that muay thai and then two taekwondo and one karate it's amazing right but all right but the jiu jitsu how many of those champions were in the first few years right right excuse me as soon as we figured it out well now everybody does everything but i still think that base is the most important base the wrestling base because a dominant wrestler a guy like a daniel cormier a guy like a jon jones a guy who's an elite wrestler they have that advantage over everybody if [ __ ] gets weird they could take the guy down at any time or if they just decide to impose their will they can take the guy down or if you want to take them down because they're striking they're out striking you you can't because they're wrestling so good yeah it's just such a it's such a giant advantage sprawling snap your head into the mat but you were one of the first guys to enter the ufc that had they looked like real polished skills when you came out
guns blazing you won your first fight by first round knockout and i remember watching on tv i'm like that [ __ ] can fight like because you're seeing people that a lot of times you're seeing folks that probably shouldn't have been there like there was back in the day like you remember the early days there was guys that were like they trained in ninjutsu they were practicing like karate chopping people on the top of the heads all kinds of wacky [ __ ] [ __ ] they were hurt but when i saw you i was like okay that guy's an actual fighter and when you see the way you were throwing punches and your your wrestling ability and you sh and you were a good size too you weren't too big you weren't too small you probably weighed like what 210 something like that yeah 05 205. i said two tangos sounded better well i knew i was going to gain weight through that year you know because that was the plan yeah i was a fireman and i was shooting horses in arizona you know you're working six seven days a week you know and i knew as soon as i gave it up you know 10 pounds would come on real fast right right and everybody was chasing that was when mark coleman and ufc 12 was when mark coleman became the champion when he beat uh dan severn and mark was 265 pounds he was a monster he was a [ __ ] gorilla like people forget he had everybody gaining weight yeah everybody gained weight when they saw the hammer they're like [ __ ] i got no choice yeah you had to they shot that power double and that was the headbutt days too yeah yeah the the when mark would get on top of you and and get control you and start smashing his head into your face those are quick nights it wasn't fun yeah because um dan started that and then i did it and then mark did it yeah you know and somehow mark became the grandfather of it so i guess i'm a great grandfather dan's great-great-grandfather of ground and pound yeah
yeah it was uh it was a real wake-up call for a lot of people but so was the jiu jitsu right when hoist gracie tapped dan severan that was a wake-up call for a lot of people like how the [ __ ] is he doing that off his back oh yeah his legs that was that the the gracies they changed martial arts changed the world over yep yeah i think they're the most important family in the history of of all martial arts yeah i mean that was their plan you know and it was a great plan the whole thing what was brilliant about it it was like a paid infomercial yeah that you paid for yeah yeah you paid 20 you know you laugh at it now back then 20 bucks with a lot of money yeah but you know you paid 20 to sit there and watch an infomercial but it was brilliant brilliant so exciting when you had your first fight you had your first fight in the ufc once it was over once you won were you like okay this is what i'm doing now yeah yeah i won i won that and i'm like you know i love this this is fun back to being competitive you know um because my my athletic career was like this you know it really was ups and downs yeah you know i'd get burned out and walk away yeah and um he had a real short attention span i guess but when you saw what the ufc was where you could take guys down or you could stand up with them strike it was it was such a unique thing that just appealed to you yeah because i wasn't afraid to get punched in the face right you know that helps yeah it does for sure yeah because there's a lot of wrestlers that they go in there and the bam you get hit in the bridge of the nose it changes your opinion real fast everything no joe yeah your eyes water up yeah it's an uncomfortable feeling now did you think at that point in time that this was something that you that this was going to be a real sport
because a lot of people weren't sure if it was going to last back then like ufc 8 when you you entered it was like it was still kind of crazy it was when i came around was ufc 12 and they were banned from uh pay-per-view on uh everything except directv directv was the only people that had them on you couldn't get it on cable anymore because uh boxing was in cahoots with john mccain budweiser and all that stuff and they were yeah that guy is dirty was he dirty oh yeah dirty yeah he's gone now rest in peace yeah he um you know he he was a paid boxing advisor to don king you know the guy didn't know what the [ __ ] he didn't know you know so when this came around it was beating boxing like you said and so don king said hey put the boots to this you know that's what happened i mean his wife you know was the head of henry distributing you know henley beer budweiser beer yeah oh that makes sense but i knew he did something with budweiser and that had a big impact on his we married budweiser yeah that had a big impact on how the ufc was uh whether whether or not it was legal because they started banning it from everywhere yeah that was that was the big joke is um after the fights you can go to the hospital or you go to the after party but number three is you can go to jail too right yeah we didn't know we didn't know if we would come out and get slapped in cuffs right and haul away you know or they're gonna let us finish the event and then arrest everybody do you remember when dan dan fought ken shamrock i think it was in denver and they told him they couldn't punch his face in closed fists there was a some kind of crazy law where they couldn't no there's detroit was it detroit was it michigan yeah okay oh okay when and everybody was going what the [ __ ] is going on like they were told
before the event that they can't punch with closed fists right there was so many crazy rules like that when i st when i the first event i did was supposed to be in new york it was supposed to be i think it was supposed to be in albany albany or buffalo no i think was it buffalo but it was upstate new york somewhere and then it got moved last minute to dothan alabama and that's where i met you yeah yeah that was ufc 12. that's when vitor made his debut fought uh trey telligman and uh that was uh that was when mark coleman fought uh dan that was uh there was a lot of great fights in that card you know trade telling me was tough i mean [ __ ] yeah not to be missing a breast you know yeah one missing one pack built like a tank [Laughter] sorry dre scott you fought scott feroza too that was a tournament that night vitor won the tournament 19 years old yeah amazing lightning bolt that guy was he was amazing you believe he's gonna fight oscar de la hoya really yeah he's gonna have a boxing match september 11th with oscar de la hoya you gotta think that guy was fighting i mean well so was oscar i mean oscar was a world champion in 97 and here it is 97 and vitor makes his debut what's that was he even born in 97 oscar oscar's in his nose [Music] vitor's 19 then yeah so oscar's a little older than vitor i believe i believe oscar's like 48 or something like that it's crazy you've seen these guys still getting after it after all these years i'd like to you'd like to yeah if your body would hold up i'm gonna go down there to columbia and do the bio accelerator you know and um the plan on that is do that and hopefully you know make make a comeback you know really [ __ ] [ __ ] joe i love it [ __ ] yeah i mean i'd love to paint nagano and yeah really yeah he's amazing yeah would you would it be better to fight
someone your age why i don't they don't have the belt do they no so you'd want to fight someone with the belt even even at your age that's why you're don fry yeah cause you think like that yeah if i get my back fixed up i'm there but me what's going on with the back right now um hell i've had uh probably five made five or six major back surgeries and then probably related 15 to 20 related you know because infections and things like that jesus and uh yeah and the infections tried to get me a couple of times and stuff mrsa yeah yeah i had one one time i had it inside the spinal cord you know or twice actually twice and then this your back yeah jesus christ don that looks like a rollercoaster ride how many discs you have fused uh i don't know if it's 11 discs or 11 um um vertebrae yeah how many vertebrae does a human have 20 some so you got half of them are fused wow give me some pictures let me see these look at that lower left oh jesus christ look at that lower left one over your back holy [ __ ] don yeah it's gonna put a zipper on it jesus christ that is crazy so they just went in and did the whole back all at once that's some wonderful [ __ ] no what happened is um whoa though so that's the infection is that why that was after the infection yeah they're draining it and they had to leave it open for a week um so that the the plastic surgeon can figure out how to connect it because i was out uh out of connective tissue it was all scar tissue so oh my god you left it open for a week you had to cut it pull cut it pull kind of pull you know wow that is wild so is this mostly from pro wrestling or is it from everything uh i would say everything i mean you
know as a fireman as a horseshoer you know jamie you go back go back three pictures the one that shows the neck and the back that one look at that so you got a few that are just hanging in there and then you got your your neck fused that is goddamn wild that's that goes all the way down the crack in my ass you know my ass track goes from my balls up to my shoulder blades wow that is crazy so it's just all scar tissue in there and bolts and screws and plates and yeah so if i go down there columbia and get you know the stem cell you might have to live there for a few years yeah just have to shoot you up every day yeah who knows you know i'm i'm a big fan of stem cells they can do some wild [ __ ] down there yeah i know a lot of guys have gone to that bio accelerator thing and uh that facility down there and had a a really good result yeah i'm excited about it you know look at me i'm giddy i can already sit still have you had any stem cells before no sir it's so sick it's they can do amazing stuff but you know that's a lot of muscle there's a lot going on there yeah you know they're gonna do my shoulders too because i have um partial replacements in my shoulders what do you got going on there like resurfaced uh no it just wore them out you know you did partial replacements yeah did did they resurface the shoulders is that what they did yes sir yes they just you know um cut the end off you know and stuck to one thing and just uh with the knob and the other side is all natural bone right yeah because they said if they do a full replacement you can't use them they're no good oh really you can't put stress on them yeah so i said the hell with that i want to you know i want to do something right are you able to work out now not yet um i just had this done this right one was done in 17 i think december 17 this one just got
done last december when did you get your first surgery after fighting how many years in were you after fighting like you mean during fighting during your career oh during fighting yeah hell because everybody's out of surgery right i mean i've never met a single fighter maybe i have and i forgot but most fighters that i know has had something blow out right you know well um see i think in 2001 was when they did my neck so that was the first one yeah because i did that from pro wrestling the war you know because i did the ufc in 96 and then in 97 i was hired by antoine uinoki and masa sayido to do new japan pro wrestling and um brad reagan's um he's a cousin of brock lesnar second cousin so he call he called up jeff you know because brad took fourth in the olympics of 76 and greco roman and then he was on the team in 80. um when and he was going to be the gold medal winner and he had beaten the gold medal winner in 76 but they were doing the point system then you know so he got screwed up what's the point system well uh you get 20 points so many points for advancing so many points for a pin so many points for you know a point when they changed it yeah so they went they went back to the normal i mean amateur wrestling [ __ ] around so much you know with the rules and so does judo have you paid attention to pfl at all no i have not i was watching that today i was watching in the gym while i was working out and they have uh it's interesting they have real good fighters over there some real good fighters but they have some wacky thing that they do where you get a certain amount of points for a submission right certain amount of points for a knockout and then you move ahead right but it's like you're scoring like like so it goes
and they call it the playoffs and then you're moving towards this eventual million dollar tournament that they put together but that's how they're doing it with um judo and with amateur wrestling yeah but their thing is weird they're they're the way they have it set up like if you win but if you win in the first round you get extra points if you win you know if you miss weight you lose a point so they have uh it's a it's a it's a hard to follow so even for someone like me who's a big fan of the sport i can't follow their system i'm like you got great fighters but you're confusing the [ __ ] out of people with this wacky system yeah well you missed wait your ass to be gone i think that's a good call i think you should not be able to fight or i think there there should be some major penalty because a lot of these guys are choosing to miss weight right you know they're choosing to miss weight absolutely they're like i don't want to do this [ __ ] it and then but you could but you know it's going to drain you and so they choose to come in a pound or two heavy and then they feel a lot better the next day right because there's you know you know better than any better chance yeah yeah a better chance of winning because they're not as drained a lot of these guys are cutting it i wish there was no weight cutting that's what i really wish i wish you got down to a healthy weight and you fought at whatever weight you're at and they just figured out what what the weight classes could be to make it so that there's more options something like that like boxing has it but i think with mma i think that the weight classes are too wide you know you got 85 and then you got 205. that's crazy that's 20 pounds to have two weight classes separated by 20 pounds is just [ __ ] nuts to me i think it should be i would love it it was five pounds but i think 10 pounds is is fine 10 pounds is
workable you know you could adjust your diet adjust your training habits do a little extra running whatever you got to do right but but more than you get into what happened in pro boxing you end up having 80 champions that's what the argument against it is right but the thing about pro boxing is you know you have all these different organizations you got the wbc wba ibo and all that [ __ ] with the ufc if they just kept it in the ufc just with the ufc and made all these different weight classes one every 10 pounds i think is very doable yeah yeah it'd be a lot more opportunities for guys to go up and wait or down and wait and fight you know have champion versus champion fights like when israel out of sonia fought yabukovic you know you got your middleweight champion fighting your light heavyweight champion the size difference is so big it's a giant size difference well that's why they need a super heavy weight yeah i think so too yeah i mean that's why cut it off at 280 fighters 265 yeah it's crazy it's ridiculous it is ridiculous you have so many uh good fighters that are heavier i mean i'm on gardner yeah like roulon gardeners like a 300 pounder well erickson tommy tom erickson yeah he was like a 300 pounder right he was when in his prime people forgot about tom erickson he's frightening [ __ ] he was terrifying elite wrestler who could knock you the [ __ ] out and he was huge and he moved like a cat yeah when in his prime tom erickson was one of the scariest specimens to ever compete in mma he was a [ __ ] gigantic man who moved so good but he's another one then like getting punched in the face though who does i kind of enjoy it well you're you're an unusual guy don fry so when you first fought and you decided okay this is what i'm gonna do um when the ufc was taken off you you stayed in the ufc for a few years and then went over to pride when
when did you find out about pride no i stayed in ufc one year only one year yeah 96 and then i went to pro wrestling oh really yeah yeah so you all your fights in the ufc were only one year one year wow no [ __ ] yeah and none of them went the distance yeah that's incredible and then from new japan pro wrestling you so how'd you find out about that i went to pride did they contact you from the ufc yes sir they contacted me yes sir um because god bless uh ken shamrock you know he he had the deal right he had a connection over there well no they they want these science they remember they offered him a deal to go over there and be a bad guy american shooter style you know and so he took that contract went to wwe right and showed them and they it or bettered it you know and um then that left new japan pro wrestling hanging so that's when masa saido called brad reagan's brad reagan's called jeff flanagan god bless lake jeff bradley he recommended me yeah what a great guy jeff blatnick was he uh he gave me some great advice when i first started working for the ufc just such a sweetheart of a guy how did he go how did he pass uh was it hurt was a heart attack so sweetheart of a guy though he was a good guy really good guy um and an elite wrestler too and just yeah and fantastic doing commentary because of that that experience he was like you he was a student of the sport yeah he got hired and studied it and you know he's amazing yeah he was an amazing guy and when so you go over to new japan pro wrestling and that's when you were getting most of your injuries you think yes sir because i was i was trying to be ric flair and terry funk you and know they didn't want that you know they they wanted more of a bruiser brody type thing you know they want you the badass american cowboy
right yeah yeah and not to take the bumps you know i end up taking bumps that i shouldn't have taken so that's the thing about progressing right people think oh it's fake listen the [ __ ] those slams are not fake you're really getting slammed you know those picking guys up over your head slamming them down them picking you up all the different the collisions you guys would have with each other night after night after night and is there circuit over there similar to the circuit here would you do a lot of different shows or were they mostly televised how'd they do it over there yeah you did a lot of dark matches you know um absolutely i mean that's how they keep the money coming in right they do arenas just like they do in america right yeah people don't know uh if you're not a fan of pro wrestling those guys are working hundreds of nights a week or a year rather they're they're you they're working you know uh dallas page was telling me that he you know sometimes did 200 plus shows a year somebody just do 300. it's incredible you stop and think about that 365 days in a year yeah that's crazy yeah you're getting whacked you know most of them yeah you're you're working more days and you're not working right it's just and the travel yeah and the travel so you're exhausted all the time you're jet lagged and you're getting slammed yeah and you got to stay in shape and you got to eat and uh yeah it's a work it's a real you know it's a real living and when you went over there did you have to go to pro wrestling school did they train you how to do it brad reagan's trained me he did yeah i guess sir and brad you know phenomenal he's a phenomenal athlete you know and like i said you know he uh took fourth in the 76 olympics in montreal when he should have won and then he would have won
the 80 on the peaks you know and then then he ended up he got out you know he trained jeff blatnick you know because they were tight and since uh brad stepped away you know all the concentration was on on jeff and how did you go from new japan pro wrestling to pride eagle you know yeah i saw mark coleman win you know i said mother you know i said that that's nonsense i should be me you know stupid so what year was that was what year was your uh your first pride fight hell partner first oh one a one yeah it was that was the glory days yeah it was two weeks after 9 11. i think it was either 23rd 28th wow wow and i went in there you know with um i told my parents find me a flag you know give it to the guys when they come over and uh my mother-in-law made those shorts for me oh really yeah all right yeah so you know the nicest you know go in with the national anthem you know nice oh it is it was amazing you know walking at the flag had a national anthem it was it was cool look at you there don fry 20 years ago isn't that wild yeah it's jeez jeez is it what year is this that fight in the lower corner that the takayama fight that was one of the craziest [ __ ] moments in the history of mixed martial arts when you and takayama were just slamming each other in the head over and over and over again god bless you man jesus christ that fight see if you just pull up that exchange because in in all the history of the sport that is one of the most iconic exchanges of any two because you couldn't believe it was happening and you couldn't believe you couldn't believe you guys kept doing it yeah yeah well you shouldn't be where i was at i mean this this fight was so [ __ ] bananas i mean you just walk towards each other and just this [ __ ] exchange is like a
movie exchange in the tie up you're both hitting each other with right hands i mean it's actual speed what in the [ __ ] is that how the hell did you guys do that well if you go back you see i slipped so i grabbed him though you know because i slipped i had to grab his neck keep from falling and so he just stayed there and i stayed there just nuts i mean i never seen anything like that before or since that was while that was happening and you just slamming right hands into each other like that what was going through your head i was like what the hell's keeping this guy up he was probably thinking the same thing about you but i hit it hard joe right yeah yeah you hit him with some [ __ ] haymakers oh man and i i couldn't believe he was taking them and it was like he's starting to scare the hell out of me [Laughter] was that one of those 80 000 seat shows one of those gigantic ones they did yeah i think there's only 45. a small show a medium show because they did some uh some saitama super arena shows where it was just insanity oh we did uh tokyo dome i did antonio gnocchi's retirement match oh yeah tokyo dome 70 000 so they sold that out and then they sold 5 000 standing tickets you know wow they got permission from the party party do that so i did that and then they did the um national soccer arena you know for uh pride k1 new year's eve oh wow this one that's when um uh jerome lebanon knocked me on my ass yeah you had that one kickboxing fight against him that's that's a crazy deal to take to take a kickboxing fight against one of the great kickboxers of all time yeah yeah and um is that an ego deal too yeah you go in well the thing is the deal was we were supposed to do it in that mma fight yeah and then he backed out of that i don't know what happened but man never
there's a lot of things that happened joe that i'm finding out now you know 20 years later that uh you know the the two scumbags that were my age at the time oh really yeah yeah also they made some back door deals yeah oh sorry to hear that yeah that's the sport right yeah that's prize fighting there's always going to be scumbags prize fighting is full of [ __ ] yeah yeah there's i'm watching this um uh the kings documentary on showtime have you seen it no i just found out about it yesterday oh it's [ __ ] amazing it's amazing it's so good it's all about roberta duran sugary leonard thomas hearns and marvin hagler it's [ __ ] incredible yeah it's incredible it's so good and it makes you remember like man those days were wild well they they had the one once we were kings you know about the heavy colleges yeah yeah yeah this is uh just about those four guys in like the you know the matches that they had with each other well the the ones who were kings were about ollie foreman fraser norton yep and holmes yeah yeah those are some those animals there yeah my god some amazing fights i loved hagler oh my god he's my favorite yeah yeah i'd love to have you it broke my heart when i finally freaking passed yeah that's a rough one that made me real sad he was uh when i was a kid he was my idol yeah because he was just like this guy that didn't have any height behind him a hard-working guy from brockton massachusetts just blue collar has always outworked everybody yeah and just wouldn't stop and then when he got to the pinnacle when he knocked out thomas hearns that fight was just like that was the fight that made him and people really understood what kind of greatness that man had in him people knew how good he was before that but he had to see him against another
superstar and see him just wade right into the fire to see what time what you know thomas hearns was a murderous puncher a monster murderous puncher and to see marvin hagger just take it and keep coming forward what a [ __ ] and it was a fight it was barely a boxing match it was a fight you know i mean they made it a war they had that on their hat right yeah yep that was that was haggler yeah he put war on everything yeah he's he was something special you know he was an inspiration in massachusetts everybody i still question um the leonard decision yeah yeah i thought he won that fight yeah yeah i thought he won that fight but i did love the fact that he retired he said that's it done [ __ ] this sport yeah i'm going to italy and make martial arts movies how did he do were they yeah they were terrible terrible movies but he made a lot of money you know he was a superstar over there were any worse than uh [ __ ] huh oh they were worse believe it or not really yeah they were crazy bad but they were comically bad they were like you know you punch people they go flying through the air that kind of [ __ ] you never seen and now you fight some cliches found some clips they were hilarious movies you know um but you know he decided he didn't want to fight anymore and went out at the very top of his game yeah which is kind of incredible this is only a few guys have ever done that andre ward did that he did that you know only a few guys ever just went out the guy from ufc george st pierre uh khabib khabib number yeah yeah khabib did it yeah i mean khabib and khabib and um i mean no very few guys have ever gotten to the point where khabib is and and decided i mean he's in in his early 30s right this is marvin hagler here so look at this all right let's see look at this shooting the boat they
i don't know what he was doing but look at they just these are terrible movies there's just uh these like silly movies i think you shoot at the roof yeah i don't know what he's doing it's just crazy they're just italian movies but he was a huge star over there i guess he learned italians he punches that guy through the air that's a hell of a hook look at this [Laughter] that's great but there's some someone has to do something like that on the early days of pride they really do because the pride was something special because for us that were watching it at home the all the fans we it was a it wasn't known it wasn't like everybody like the ufc today say if um francis ingano's fighting or style bender's fighting everybody knows it's big it's a huge sport you know you know you find out the events coming this weekend hundreds of thousands if not a million pay-per-view buys it's a big deal but back then pride was no one knew over here only the martial arts fans knew it wasn't a big deal but we knew that we were seeing something special well it was like a super bowl every three months it was i'll tell you what joe it was you know people say uh you know the nogara brothers came over here got whooped they say merco come we were busted up man yeah you get in top shape every three months to fight you know a top guy you get busted up and it's it's hard it's so hard on the body to do something like that yeah everybody who came over to america had already been past their prime in pride they had already had a career yeah a full career yeah like think of nogueira's wars the wars that he had the war with fedor with crow cop with i mean so many guys big bob bob sapp
bob was 375 pounds and pile drived him i love bob apparently minotauro's neck was [ __ ] up for the rest of his life after that fight yeah i can see that of course god yeah i mean bob was 375 with a six-pack which what in the [ __ ] was he taking oh he you know what five percent body fat he was so big it was so big it seemed like a like a boss character in a video game yeah like the the final guy that you had to beat you know i mean bob was just gigantic and he had some skills yeah and he's the funniest guy was he oh my god he's so funny you know um and then uh yeah somebody told me not to say that to you yeah but he was funny yeah bob's funny well his character was hilarious he put the cape on and everything and they loved him in japan boy they loved him over there he was a huge superstar with it right yeah then um but i think that time that period of time from like 2001 to whenever it was a pride went away was like 2006 or something like that say yeah it was a 10 years or 8 years look at him an overeem yeah horse meat did they fight i don't know it says versus behind oh it is an arm wrestling match okay well ubeream is back he's going back to glory so they're going to let him get back on the secret sauce we're going to see aleister ovary yeah good that's what i say yeah listen test all the fighters you have to test but when a guy's been saucy all throughout the best parts of his career and then you make him come over here and be natural i mean we got a chance to see him against uh brock lesnar when he was saucy right you know right when he was 265 jacked built like a superhero but then you know all these pesky usada tests you know what if every athlete on the planet would tell you something to kiss their [ __ ] ass you know they go away they should go away they have too much power you know to bang on somebody's door at five o'clock in the morning how about
when they were about to fight like fight day they did it to uh alexander volkanovsky really wasn't it him was was it was him yeah literally fight day these [ __ ] wake him up at six o'clock in the morning and and tell him to take a piss i i'd unleash the dogs yeah yeah that is insanity it's insanity that they would even think that would be okay right and it's of a huge disadvantage if they don't test his opponent right they should test him at the same time but even first of all they should leave him the [ __ ] alone yeah that's it's crazy that they did that i mean the psychological yeah [ __ ] that is dude i mean he was like are you [ __ ] kidding me are they really here yeah you know he couldn't believe it i mean he's he's just trying to stay calm get ready for a fight and when when you were fighting in pride they they test it all like they sure they tested yeah yeah but they didn't give a [ __ ] we don't know what happened they spilt it on the way ensign told me that they had in the contract in all capital letters we do not test for steroids oh yeah yeah he said they were like let you know oh yeah yeah well it was like uh ufc nine when when um mccarthy came in and said you can't punch you know you closed fist right or you will be fined somewhere sometime some amount down the road you know right so yeah go ahead basically oh is that what he said oh okay so you will be fined eventually somewhere some amount you know oh so it was one of those deals yeah yeah so i mean we're gonna we're gonna force this stupid rule you know that you know what was it like working in pride i liked it until until i found out that um you know i had been robbed a couple times and they were supposed to have paid your taxes and then you know i went and did the last show as a favor you know and i took a
tremendous cut and you know then the next day i go in to get paid and the president pride's not there so [ __ ] something's up and they said yes you know i'm not going to say his name because you know it's still questionable everything so he said he's on the he's not here he's on the phone yeah crap he says don's on yesterday japanese irs come to our office looking for you he said they're downstairs right now waiting on you oh boy yeah so i had to go down there and pay my way out japan oh jesus christ yeah wow yeah there was a lot of weird shenanigans with money over there right that was why bob sapp wound up leaving right they they told him he they wanted him to fight and he didn't have a contract yeah and the day of the fight there's still no contract it's like if i don't have a contract i'm not going out there and then they effectively kind of blackballed them and they never really reached those same heights again they stopped promoting them stop you know well some [ __ ] over there made the announcement that uh you know the yakuzas was involved with pride you know like that's a shocker i mean you get cruises involved with everything and that killed the business over there right yeah was that like the media did that or a journalist yeah a journalist yeah but everybody knew anyway right right but you're not supposed to publicly announce it because then advertisers don't want to be involved in it right yeah and is that what killed the business over there yeah it destroyed it so how many years did it run for and it's like in its heyday i don't know i did the last one i don't know if it was eight or nine dude we'll find out because so it was like a good solid seven or eight years no it's more than that i'm sorry was it i'm thinking about myself here imagine that yeah because i came in at number 19 right
uh was it yeah 19 or 21. i remember the first one was uh hixson hixson fought the very first one and they used it was hixson versus takata right wasn't that number one i believe so i think that was because i think the way they launched pride i do remember that hixon was the first one because the way they launched pride was by having pro wrestling stars compete in mma right and that was one of the big attractive attractions to pride because pro wrestling in japan back then was gigantic right oh yeah well the uwf remember the uwf yeah that was like the the first creation of pride i guess i don't know yeah well you know they had they had um their guys shooting on each other sometimes sometimes right and sometimes not what that means for for people that don't understand what that means some of the fights were a work meaning like you knew who was gonna win you had worked it out in advance and some of the fights just turned out to be real fights and that was a thing that would happen sometimes in japan with pro wrestling right it would just decide that and sometimes the opponent didn't know right and the guy would go out and start throwing haymakers at them and kick them and take them down stomp them and you're like whoa what happened here too i mean you had gene lebel oh yeah you know who's the muscle for his parents you know yeah you know and then roddy piper was a muscle for a while yeah yeah well it's um a lot of guys who were in pro wrestling were legit combat sports athletes and some of them were just pro wrestlers they just got into it just as entertainers so there was a wide variety and over in japan takata was kind of uh you know he was a huge superstar over there and he but hixon would not agree to anything other than a real fight so when you watch that fight it's very clear
[Laughter] but some of the fights weren't right right and you kind of had to like look at it with a discerning eye like you'd see a guy get caught in a heel hook and you're like like that looks a little fishy like well i remember um after ken shamrock and i fought i went to a wwe show here in in tucson and the undertaker he asked me if that was a work it was just because you both ended up in a heel hook i'm like oh [ __ ] yeah we both ended up being here you know we both he had my foot and that was the only thing i grabbed but you know yeah that was a that was a shoot buddy yeah it looked real oh it believed me is real well ken was one of the very first guys to really master heel hooks yeah and use those in the ufc early on remember yeah my god well he you know had the hairline fracture in both my freaking ankles yeah yeah i mean you should have seen them you know my ex-wife and i we would usually go from japan to l.a you know but that time we stopped in uh hawaii and my ankles are this big you know just going if i don't went the whole way you know i wouldn't i could barely walk off that plane wow yeah it was a little painful yeah i totally imagine yeah how many fights did you have over there in pride not a lot i don't know what what six years six or seven yeah something along those lines who do you think was your toughest fight over there oh jeez takayama would have to be my toughest fight i mean it wasn't the prettiest thing but it was the most iconic yeah you know i mean it wore me out you know i could only imagine yeah physically and psychologically i mean you just it just yeah you go what the hell is going on here yeah [Laughter]
it was kind of frightening you know you said something to me once i'll never forget this about the ken shamrock fight he said uh that if you want to be honest both of you left a little bit of yourself in that ring and you were never the same afterwards yeah oh yeah never yeah there's some of those fights that you think back and you think back how you were before the fight and how you were after the fight and they were just so crazy so much violence it's just well just the preparation too yeah i mean the psychological preparation sometimes is harder than the physical operation yeah how so you just got you have to separate yourself not only from your family you know your your wife and your kids and your friends but the whole world you know i mean i completely understand what it's like to come out of prison you know hmm i mean prison not jail but prison for a long time because you are just used like i said not to be redundant but i am but you completely separate yourself from everything everything hmm when you would prepare for these fights where were you uh where were you training at the time uh they're in tucson um a couple of times i had to leave you know um for the second mark coleman fight you know i went over and um i had frank shamrock you know training oh really yeah and we couldn't train i was so beat up you know at that point in my my career uh yeah we get up you know go have breakfast go get a massage go to the chiropractor you know go go to get stretched go to that it was just hardly any any fighting you know um just watch the fight on tv you know i mean it was just trying to keep your body healthy yeah just to show up yeah wow so what kind of like physical training were you
able to do when you were that banged up not much you know i mean um like i said we would just do stretching and just technique you know basically just technique really yeah what'd you do for conditioning yo joe i don't even remember anymore really for that fight yeah cause shamrock frank in particular was always a stickler for conditioning he was always an amazing cardio yeah i mean that was on one of his big weapons they would put a pace on guys that's what he did at tito that's what he did to john lober and the rematch just put to put a pace on guys they couldn't keep up with oh frank was amazing he was a people forgot about frank yeah he was a beast he's an amazing athlete yeah yeah remember when he uh arm barred kevin jackson yeah won the title yeah no he was a monster yeah that was that's one of the things that you know i use an example you know there was a gold medalist you know in in the hardest discipline you know and frank caught him what 30 seconds ago yeah you know and jackson's a stud oh yeah real stud amazing wrestler yeah have you ever worked out with him no no stronger than the [ __ ] ox oh i could only imagine i mean all those elite wrestlers the the kind of strength those guys have remember when royce alger came over to the ufc and uh um ensign ensenard yeah yeah fast yeah same thing caught him in armbar but so many wrestlers they just didn't understand what they were getting into no yeah that's the thing you know you you know they leave those arms out there and boom they're snatched real fast so when you were training with frank how did you hook up with frank how did uh how did that take place and where were you guys training oh hell we were at his house was that was he in california at the time yes sir so you went up there and just trained with him
yeah did you camp with him because i hate you know my like my career going up and down my marriage had a lot of that you know i needed to get the hell out of town you know because i get it yeah things weren't going good and um so how did you uh make that connection with frank you know trying to figure that one out um if that was a second coleman fight so that was after ken right but uh you know i don't know how the hell it happened but he uh i called him i called you called them you need some help yeah yeah and he get out i think uh because i fought uh the french guy the first french guy um new year's eve um first french guy not lebanon no who's the other french guy french guy huh no he's a kickboxer and i boogered his eye up real bad you know who was that i'm trying to remember i think he was gonna find it enoki i think it was an enoki show nah that's uh it wasn't dynamite right so yeah it was a dynamite show well that's in the cow the cow aka bono there's a white guy only cyril oh oh that's right and you got him with a rear naked choke man so back then when you uh trained with frank the lions den was probably the first real mixed martial arts team where they were like really prepared them and military fighting systems right right pat militich's place and the hawaiians den they were two of the very first guys that were really putting together a real legit mma team where they had like real like for the time scientific training real technique training and real preparing guys for things well you know like you said you they had a team yeah you know i had a group of guys you know um i had the first group of non-white guys all my guys are mexican except for a couple white boys you know yeah arizona yeah yeah and they're tough
tough guys man you know one guy was a former uh sniper in the seals another couple guys were former uh marines um and what discipline would those guys have martial arts wise basically judo and wrestling you know boxing too so same thing i had so when you were prepared for a fight back then did you have like a head trainer that was like steve owen was my head trainer and he he would prepare your camps and the whole deal yeah steve is amazing you know we call him the evil yoda you know he is he's he he was a great uh judo guy um several times national judo champion couple time world mean just amazing and he can look at a fight in five minutes of a fight and boom have it have uh the game plan drawn up and so he was one of those so he was one of the first guys that was in your your camp that likes he was my judo sensei oh okay my first judo sensei was a guy um [ __ ] me no uh torres what the jeez please no i feel like an [ __ ] no i remember my sensei's name it happens oh what the [ __ ] is his name keoki kiyoki torres or george torres because by keoki you know he lives in hawaii now but kiyoki was my first um he ran a kids um judo club down there on fort wachuka and um so i started going there on saturday morning mornings and steve would come down you know he would work he up at tucson be monday tuesday thursday nights and then he come down saturday morning for the kids you know but the rest is up in tucson so um i would drive up there you know um monday tuesday thursday night i'd go up there and train and [Music] then jump in the truck and drive home you know get home
at midnight one o'clock in the morning you know because i would always uh feed my guys you know after after we worked out i'd take him out for dinner you know a couple of beers for me you know even in training yeah oh hell yeah up until like the fight oh night before yeah yeah really yeah wow so you and cowboy cerrone yeah cowboy still does that he keeps drinking yeah the one of the worst i i lost to a [ __ ] idiot i shouldn't lost to because um my egg my wife at the time decided i was drinking too much taking too many pills so her and a couple of guys took my booze and my pills the night before the fight and i used to start going through withdrawals during the [ __ ] fight no yeah yeah that was something someone told me the other day that i could not believe they were telling me and i want to name any names but big time fighters particularly kickboxers that fought on heroin really the fun on pills that fought on opiates yeah i did that and that's when my career went to [ __ ] yeah and it was just because of all the pain that you were in right i mean you said that by the time of cyril abedi fight you were already banged up to the point where you could barely train yeah but you think about how long your career went after that it's crazy i mean you know that was a coleman fight i was a calming fight yeah that was so [ __ ] up i remember i met frank frank and train cyril for let's fight me and then i i called frank to train me for the cullman fight you know but you had a lot of fights even after that yeah yeah i mean it's kind of crazy you roll to that [ __ ] to the wheels fell off yeah and the frame fell off man the frame yeah exactly they had to redo your friend frame of restoration yeah right down to the bare chassis so when
you your last fight was what 2011 somewhere all the time yes sir it was kind of crazy five months after my fifth back surgery wow five months after your fifth back surgery you had a fight yeah stupid [ __ ] stupid but you want you still want to do it right now the thing about guys like you it's like you never lose the itch right it's your body just fails you yeah and the tougher the guy the more the body starts to fall apart because you're willing to train through pain you look at guys like i mean cain velasquez is a great example one of the greatest of all times but his body just couldn't hang in there his his knees blew out his back blew out his neck blew out his shoulders blew out he had all these surgeries and eventually just stopped being the guy that everybody knew was kane you know his body just wouldn't do what his mind could do yeah you lose yeah yeah you learned that in in amateur wrestling though yeah you learned to keep going yeah you know um i think i broke or first broke my neck when i was in college and um didn't know it i thought i'd [ __ ] up my shoulder you know um because it was shooting down your shoulder yeah yeah and um so what happened was uh dan severan's little baby brother rod and i we were roommates and we went down uh to my parents house um for thanksgiving or something anyway we were out on those [ __ ] three wheelers oh no yeah that's how you did it yeah oh no drinking and going over and you know last last jump of the day ended up being the last joke uh you know we've been there for a couple hours gone through a few cases of beer and truck truck pulls up and uh they get out you know look at the little sissies you know because they had the shoulder pads and knee pads the gloves you know
all that and you know laughing at them and so then i go off jump front tire first boom boom boom oh no yeah so i thought i tore up my shoulder but um 20 years later when they did my neck i said would you break your fur when did the first time you broke your neck you know and you didn't know you'd ever broken your nose no i didn't know but i wrestled you know i i kept that was um in 88 87 867 and then i i set out a year in in amateur wrestling because of the injury because of your neck yeah yeah if i thought the shoulder was the neck but and then i rehabbed it you know and um because they redid the shoulder uh they cut off the inner clavicle bone back then it was how they would solve [ __ ] what did they do cut off the end of my clavicle they cut off the end of it yeah really because it was just destroyed so you just slap it off wow holy [ __ ] and uh that's early 90s surgeries yeah yeah [ __ ] 80s 80s and then um kurt angle wrestled in the olympics with a broken neck didn't he yeah he won the gold medal with a broken neck yeah crazy yeah there's no one tougher than wrestlers yeah i know i [ __ ] they cut they fixed the shoulder cut off the it was the right shoulder i think and he has the right shoulder and um so they put me bobby douglas put me on a medical scholarship you know so it would open up a scholarship for that team which is what needed to be done and um so i so then i rehabbed it through 87 and then probably through 88 you know um i went up and uh you know working out with the team and all that but i went up to the las vegas southwestern regional qualifying tournament for the olympics
and i wanted that in greco and freestyle and then i went to which qualified you for the national finals you know and so then i went up there for the greco got my ass handed to me you know i thought you know you get lucky everyone smiling think you're good at it and uh but they wouldn't let me go to the um freestyle you know i said pick one of the other and like a dumbass i picked the wrong one you know and uh but i ended up taking fifth i think it took fifth that year 56 in the national freestyle tournament you know it must been six so because they took the first five and always a bridesmaid you know right and uh but yeah art muratori you know was a must was the money guy back then you know for for the atlantic team almost so when he's a great guy so with all the injuries when did you first start uh taking pain medication oh [ __ ] you know the first time was in 96 you know um so this was during the ufc days yeah because that was ufc 8 was what was that 96. yeah that was february 96 and then crap joe what the hell do you remember when you started fighting on him no that was a [ __ ] mistake when that was oh well what happened i did i heard something in the ufc i broke my hand right her coleman coleman beat the hell out of me rather calling me 10 yeah and the ufc 10. yeah and so then they you know he broke my ocular i think either occipital i don't know and um and uh then something else happened anyways then i fought mark hall was my first fight that night and then um i was offered a fight um against him in japan in november right before you know november 96 and um our uh
bob meyers found out that i was going to do that and that dan was going to do that you know and he was pissed because the opportunity of ruining the ultimate ultimate too right and i said come on bob mark hall you know come on and uh marcotte was undersized right yeah smaller guy tough guy buck 85 [ __ ] idiot was he yeah i didn't know [ __ ] it i don't know him at all he you'd want to slap him upside the head if you did the [ __ ] guy is going around saying that you know um he took a dive oh did he yeah against me is the ultimate ultimate you know his second round you know [ __ ] him oh i didn't need i already beat him twice i you know he would be the last person in there i want to take a dive you know but um so i beat gary goodridge you know the first round ultimate ultimate and i uh buddy my dave norch he had gone with me for the fire department he was a paramedic okay so he hits me up with a line you know we put two bags two or three bags after the goodrich fight all right yeah which boom you know fired you right back up probably right back fresh as a daisy you know and um so then i beat hall boom you know fast i mean tank knocks out his guy you know and so god damn he's dead he broke his neck you know you hear all these alabama guys you know was that steve nomark yeah that was a crazy chaos that was a wild one tank could [ __ ] crack oh man it was it was like one of those puppets you know someone just cut the strings we could just fold it back on that was one of the great ko's of those days that was amazing yeah it was i didn't see it and then it was you and tank in the finals yep taking it in the finals yeah and you got his back you know crazy war then you guys back and forth [ __ ] i mean
stupid ass me you know i walk out lumber out there and step sideways he'll heal what happens when you stand on your heels joe you get knocked backwards you knocked on your ass you know you shouldn't be and stupid ass i don't know what the hell i was thinking you know he'll heal but as soon as that second heel landed he hit me you know with the jab yeah hard jab though yeah that [ __ ] kid everything he did was hard damn right you know he was like um you want to talk about a guy who could drink yeah i made a mistake of drinking with him one night him and his buddies at the bar tank it put him away i remember one time i was there for i forget which event was but there was a giant brawl that broke out right after i went to bed i i left everybody everybody was downstairs in the after fight area hanging out drinking and uh it was getting late so i was like well i'm gonna go to bed so i went upstairs to go to bed and then i heard like you just missed it yeah apparently valid uh lead and uh tank got into a brawl and it was just chairs flying and all kinds of crazy [ __ ] and i missed it by like 20 minutes [ __ ] brazilians here they ain't fighting the job at the best top of a hat [ __ ] coming up i remember hearing pride having breakfast you know a couple of times they almost got right next to my table yeah guys i'm [ __ ] eating here you know starting brawling well there's so many brawls back then right charles crazy horse bennett and silva brawled backstage yeah yeah legendary fights backstage and someone should do a documentary on pride they really they really should because it was just a [ __ ] crazy time in martial arts history and it was also a time when fedor was in his prime yeah and i think it's arguable that fedor in his prime was the greatest heavyweight of all time yeah yeah it's between my mind it's hard to
say because you know like fabricio for doom beat both him and kane right but i think he caught fedor when fedor was battle worn and he was pretty deep into his career and also there was testing over in america there wasn't testing in in japan right you know and then the same thing with uh with kane when uh fabricio caught kane kane had already gone through it it had been a pretty long extensive career but it's uh it's arguable that when he like when he fought crow cop when he fought noguera when he fought uh all those guys over there was arguable that fedor was the greatest fedora was the greatest there's no reason to even [ __ ] talk about it you know i mean it's simple if you ever watched the man fight live it it it it was something you'll never forget you know i mean those things over there they were they were events they weren't just a fight you know you go to you know on a saturday night hey let's go watch the fight you know they were [ __ ] events there like i said super bowl every three months the women would get dressed up the men were you know i mean you know you planned your whole [ __ ] week around it you know you think they'd go and have their dinner steak dinner you know not not beer on the back of the pickup you know that was a big deal yeah it was a big deal we used to get up in the morning and watch them because they were live from japan so they'd be on here like i forget what it was five in the morning something crazy like that yeah and we would watch them live yeah you you never went to a pride no i missed it they offered me a a gig commentating at one point yeah they came to meet me in uh i forget where it was one of the ufc events back when i was doing the interviews and they uh they offered me a gig to commentate in pride and i was like oh man yeah [ __ ] up i should have done
it at least once who owned the ufc bob that was bob bob did back in the day yeah bob was such a good guy but he did not like any you going anywhere out doing anything else you know he's he he was a good man but he was solid on on loyalty you know and he felt you know that you're betraying him you know which is probably probably the truth at the time you know well there was so much competition and there was only i mean the ufc was the big thing in america but pride was way bigger than the ufc back then in terms of size it wasn't even close ufc was doing small places in comparison to what pride was doing well that [ __ ] mccain yep yep yeah she was choking them out and then when zufa bought the ufc when the fertittas and dana white came along then they had the business plan and then they had the money and even then i mean they were real close to bailing yeah one point in time they were 40 million dollars in debt which is just nuts that was right when the ultimate fighter came along and they they had actually talked to dana on the phone and said let's try to sell it and dana was gonna sell it they were gonna start putting out offers and try to see you know who wanted to buy the ufc and then i guess for to change his mind i guess um they just decided listen we'll wait we'll wait we'll wait it out and then they did the ultimate fighter and then boom it takes off but apparently they were literally at the like they were thinking about putting out the offers and they he actually made the phone call and decided to lorenzo did to dana and dana was ready to sell it and then they they changed their mind last minute and then boom look what it is now it's kind of wild because if they sold it who the [ __ ] knows what would have happened i would have quit for sure i would have stopped doing commentary they probably would have uh
you know they would have had to have somebody that had a lot of media savvy that knew how to market the company and and try to re rebrand it or something and they probably would have sold it and they probably lost a lot of money too because before the ultimate fighter in 2005 it wasn't really worth that much money no it wasn't it wasn't but then when the ultimate fighter happened and stephen bonner and forrest griffin fought live on tv and they had that crazy [ __ ] brawl and then it became popular yeah that one fight made the sport it's wild in a lot of ways that was a defining moment didn't make the sport but it was a defining moment for the spoke defining moment for the sport in america right but meanwhile in japan at the same time they were doing the saitama super arena yeah huge events gigantic spectacular crowds 50 60 000 people brah it was wild oh man the walk-ins and that the crazy pride lady that would introduce everybody her introductions were legendary oh [ __ ] funny the first time i fought she called me dan that's funny can you get a cup of coffee yeah yeah sure water oh [ __ ] what do you know here we go i didn't know that i'm sorry gentlemen no worries don't worry thank you thank you i didn't know it's right here this is my water here yeah thank you when you think back i mean what a crazy life you've lived i mean you lived like a movie life you know yeah nobody would believe it you wouldn't believe it it was in a movie it'd be a crazy spectacular movie for you to go from being a guy who's uh shoeing horses and working in a fire department all of a sudden you decide i could do that and you take a fight the next thing you know what i guess i'm fighting now yeah two all the way to japan to kickboxing jerome la banner and the fighting in these giant arenas and doing new japan pro wrestling and
it's a crazy life you've lived on frye it's a fun one it was a fun one half the time i'm done you know i just i i got my bulldog quinn and if it wasn't for her i had a guy that went you know she's the only reason i'm here now your bulldog yep really yeah like yeah my kids are grown you know they don't have time for me you know they're good good girls beautiful smart you know but you know they're 20 21. they have their life yeah when you think back on the all the the damage that it did to your body if you had to go back and do it all again would you do it again [ __ ] sweet ass i knew you're gonna say that i knew you're gonna know when i do it now columbia works out for me yeah right when you um you see fighters today and you you know that you're a gigantic part of the evolution of the sport i mean you're a pioneer you were there in the early days when you see what it what it's like now it's got to be pretty crazy to see and know that you are a vital part of the beginning of this thing you know i really don't understand what you're saying about you know about being a vital part and being you were one of the legends man you're like if you if you go back and look at the the legends of the sport don fry you're one of the legends man whether you believe it or not you're you're one of the [ __ ] og's when i told my friends that i was having you on the podcast today people like oh [ __ ] they were so excited people were pumped people [ __ ] love you man they love you because you are you you are 100 authentic you wear your heart on your sleeve you don't [ __ ] you're a [ __ ] real man you're the you're the real deal don fry thanks thanks not a lot of people like you probably a good good call mean think about it like what you've done in your life there's not a lot of humans that would have
followed your path very few people no they go pretty easy round not that very smart enough to take the easy route how many uh of those fights do you think you you fought when you're on the pain pills oh [ __ ] joe um after shamrock yeah everyone all of them huh yeah you just had to yeah yeah i had no choice you know um yeah my body was so beat up and then you know being a dumbass you think okay i've been i live on these things i train on these things you know i can fight on these things yeah that's stupid i think there was a lot of people doing that though that's what my friend was telling me the other night he was telling me look man you don't know but i'm telling you a lot of those guys were fighting on heroin they're fighting on opiates i never did the heroin but opiates the same thing it's you know it's opiates yeah i did that um what was that [ __ ] kerr was on oxycontin no the the percocets oh injectable well i don't know what that is from the smashing machine yeah that movie was a wake-up call for a lot of people huh yeah i never saw the thing it's crazy i saw bits and pieces but it's crazy [ __ ] documentary yeah and they caught him you know that wasn't the purpose of that film the purpose of that film when they started making that documentary was when mark kerr was in his prime and what a [ __ ] specimen that guy was right and they were they wanted to document this guy who was this [ __ ] elite super athlete wrestler who's the smashing machine it was just that's what they nicknamed him over there and he was just killing everybody and during the process of filming it they realized like wow this guy's addicted to pain medication and he was real open about it and he showed them everything and then you got to see the two he they
caught him at during the filming right when the wheels were falling off so it was just just complete dumb luck that that documentary became sort of um a cautionary tale yeah i know that um back then around that time some hollywood producer came out to the house and uh he wanted to do uh one of one of those shows you know but i was just my body was starting to fall apart so bad and i'm like i don't know how much longer i'm gonna be able to keep this going yeah and i you know the kids kids were little you know wanted to and or less than that and i didn't want i don't want these people in my house right you know because you know it just had the kids and then like you said the wheels were falling off man and and i knew i knew things were about to go to [ __ ] you know but i didn't want to tell anybody that right did anybody know other than your trainers yeah did you know i don't know i don't know yeah when did you did you were you thinking you weren't going to be able to do this much longer were you trying to figure out something else to do with your life of course of course it's hard for fighters especially when you're making that much money right yeah and that's all you know right i mean all i've known is physical you know firemen horseshoer you know or farrier you know um fighter everything was physical and and then you know you're about to lose it all yeah and you know you're about to lose it all right that's the uh untold story of fighters before and after their careers you know during camps all you see is the fights yeah everybody sees the fights and the fights are amazing but most people have no idea the kind of pain and injury guys are going through just with
almost every camp yeah it's just [ __ ] joe you know i wake up at six in the morning now and it takes me six hours to get beyond the the kitchen you know yeah you know i'm getting better i made it outside a couple of times you know before noon wow and what kind of medications do they have you on to deal with all this now i'm a morphine um hydromorphone venice deluxe and then morphine you know and it's it's not enough but i don't want to go you know i haven't had a drink since um september from 2016. really yeah yeah yeah i ain't gonna lie to you i'd like to have one so was the problem with the drinking with the pills well you know that's that's what my ex-wife claimed [Laughter] but yeah [ __ ] i didn't think it was that bad but you know [Laughter] you're a [ __ ] animal though i don't remember how i remember what happened you know yeah when you you get to taking the pills and the alcohol you're not always uh knowing what you're saying right i i insulted a lot of people you know but it wasn't my words it was words that i didn't create it was i was like repeating [ __ ] i had heard you know right and just out of it yeah yeah yeah and yeah it wasn't wasn't something that was you know just like uh i don't i don't hate anybody right yeah you know when when you're peeled up and you're drunk yeah you spew a lot of hatred right you know especially when you're constantly in pain too yeah oh [ __ ] you're miserable just being a miserable prick are you uh constantly in pain right now no just 90 percent of the time so not constantly no no there's a good ten percent there yeah so even sitting here like with this
thing that you have on your chest is this like a back support i'm supposed to yeah it's supposed to be on my belly yeah and it's like what does that thing do like a weightlifting belt yeah a heavy-duty belt yeah it's nice i mean it's just big in the back you know it looks like ric flair's championship belt and just to keep everything together yeah support it you know give it the strength yeah but even with all the pills it's still you're still in pain oh yeah yeah so what are the pills just taking over the edge off the edge off so so that you can get going you know [ __ ] joe um like i said first surgery was may 2010 you know things were really bad in 08 you know my father passed away and um i could only walk 40 steps you know it would take me half an hour to get out to the barn to feed the horses yeah i go 40 steps sit down 40 steps sit down the crazy thing is how many times did you fight after that you fought at least twice after that yeah [ __ ] i thought i don't know you got the you got the card the record you fought when you had been in that condition that's really crazy really stupid well you just you're a wild [ __ ] man i wouldn't expect nothing less what are you doing with yourself these days i understand i understand your uh toxic masculinity shirt toxic masculinity yeah is that you and uh mr severance what are you what are you guys doing with that what is what is this uh shirt uh we have a podcast do you really yes sir what's it on it's on everything apple all that jazz partner beats hill on me huh yeah there it is dan and don's toxic masculinity podcast how is uh dan doing dan's doing great and dan's amazing man he's got some wild stories too i want to get him in here as well
you got to didn't have to did i mean because he was there at the beginning the very beginning yeah you gotta get him he was ufc two right wasn't he no i think four four and five was it okay yeah i mean yeah i came in eight i think that was um all right this thing started in 93 but actually 94 because there's only one event in 93 right you know and that one is hard it was hard to find back in the day they don't i think there's something going on with the rights to it so i the first one i saw was in 94 i watched a videotape of it yeah i got it from a videotape store back in the days when you have like blockbuster video and [ __ ] like that yeah i still got a couple of vhs tapes too yeah i don't know if uh i think i might have one or two that's not even opened yet yeah wow they're probably worth a lot of money you think so yeah [ __ ] ebay those are classics now if they're not even opened yeah yeah i bet you could ebay the [ __ ] out of them especially if you sign it i got i got a couple of my t-shirts yeah original t-shirts yeah oh really and then i've got um a couple of the programs oh wow you know yeah yeah i'll have to find one i'll send it to you yeah please do um what was funny was the program from ultimate ultimate too you know i mean back then it was like on on paper you know eight and a half by eleven paper yeah and they just take down the xerox machine you know yeah and then staple it up and hand it out yep and that was it wow yeah it was [ __ ] funny but um going back to ultimate ultimate too see i didn't want to fight mark kerr or mark hall you know because i i had already beating twice and i knew there's gonna be [ __ ] involved i just knew that it'll be [ __ ] and vote how so because we had the same manager you know and and i guess
white fighting three times in the [ __ ] row right i wanted to fight um there's a black guy whose name was ty bowden yeah i don't know if that was ruined typo but type odin you know i don't know that's his real name or not but he had a um for his photo he had a karate uh ghee guy with his head cut out and taped on there glued on i said i want to fight that guy and they're like no you can't you already beat a black guy if you beat two black you know crazy stuff come on who said that your manager no i don't know who said that oh that's hilarious yeah that's hilarious yeah beyond it's one of those stupid [ __ ] things that you know you believe now you know but not 20 years ago i wish someone was filming all those events back then they were in these weird little rickety arenas and it was so strange back then it was like i remember the first one i did was which was in dothan i remember even being there while it was happening i'm like this is the crazy the the fact that i'm even here this is the craziest thing ever you had a flying in propeller planes you had to do in these weird towns where they let it happen because it was mostly illegal in most of states in the country well look what happened to kevin randleman you know he slipped on a on a pipe yeah and fell and banged his head yeah yeah i mean how dirty does an arena have to beat you he had fallen pipes yeah he slipped on a pipe and fell and banged the back of his head off the ground and couldn't fight yeah yeah i think he knocked himself out yeah yeah you know how hard it was knockout realm yeah right i think he was the most half-bloody competitor ever be in the ufc he was a tremendous athlete yeah tremendous he was so fast remember when he knocked out crow cop and pride yeah nobody saw that coming no
i mean krokop was one of the most elite strikers of all time and randleman was such a powerful wrestler that he was worried about the shot he faked the shot came in with a left hook yeah yeah anyway round one was amazing amazing like i said i think he was the the greatest athlete ever be in the ufc do you ever see the the holes that that the staff infections that guy had yeah but i don't remember oh my god they were crazy he had he took photos of him put him online he had holes in his like armpit area where you could see all the muscle tissue like it was wide open so nasty that the staff had gotten through his skin and just left these big abscesses like i'm talking three four inch holes like jamie see if you can find it because it's it's one of the most [ __ ] up things you have to see it a lot of folks don't know how bad staph infections can get i always show him kevin randleman's injuries look at that look at that hole look how bad that is it's crazy right yeah they've closed up but i mean he died young i mean it had to contribute yeah look at this knee is that his knee over there in the bottom maybe somebody else somebody else's had somebody else's knee yeah okay another horrible staph infection staff has some scary [ __ ] [ __ ] yes i had that yeah um like i said oh geez i don't know which surgery it was but i the back yeah and she's [ __ ] lisa what the hell i know that it had gotten in the surgeon um that did my first replacement he was from south korea he was a harvard graduate you know put himself through college you know going to harvard and um he said he almost vomited wow you know during the surgery jesus christ and then that was and then um that was in 10 or 11
no i was 12 or 13. and then um the one that was in my in my spinal cord the second time that was in 17 they're 18 you know in tucson that's one of the biggest problems with surgeries right infections yeah and they they were like yeah we got you just in time you know what's [ __ ] up about the whole thing was that um they had put me in the first doctor didn't believe it they couldn't find anything you know so they put me in a in an old folks home you know we where you go to die basically really yeah and um [ __ ] and i would wake up at four o'clock in the morning just screaming because the pain medication would wear off and i'd wake up screaming you know so i need some pain medication there they go you're not doing for another two hours turn off the light close the door go down the hall and uh have you screamed and i'd call up my buddy jeff you've got to get me out of here you're going to get me and so i made the finally got hold of the fire department they came down to get me i'm screaming this is the infection in my spinal cord and i can't [ __ ] you know and the guy's like you don't quit cussing i'm gonna decline to take you oh my god like what i look at this captain i said you're kidding me right and he says no like he is us well the fire department we put up with all kinds of [ __ ] cuts and all that he says things have changed man you know jesus yeah i mean and i was just close to buying the farm wow so the doctor just missed the infection just yeah and so then they finally get you in they got in there and they said my spinal cord was all lumpy and swollen and all that and then they just kind of poked it and all this stuff come out yeah oh jesus so this jackass [ __ ] paramedic you know
didn't want to take me because i was cussing that's hilarious yeah [Laughter] yeah what a life you've had don fry what a life if i had the money i'd get a lawyer go after [Laughter] just give me five minutes in the ring so how often are you doing this podcast with dan now shoot me sir um that it's it's gone down to i think it's been uh three weeks now we were supposed to do it every week and then um dan went back to michigan because dan owns an island it does oh yeah one of the ones won the lakes there you know so he went back there to redo his cabin oh really yeah oh that's cool so he's got a like a small island that you have to roll your boat out to yeah yeah little one acre place yeah oh really yeah that's cool cool one acre island yeah this is that's pretty badass yeah that's nice yeah i'm i'm envious of him man but i'm happy for him that guy had how many mma fights he must have had a hundred he's had over a hundred yeah crazy and the thing is he's got him and there's three guys had over 100 fights but jeremy horn yeah him and jeremy have winning records which is pretty crazy yeah the other guy shannon the cannon yeah right yeah i don't want to say his name yeah only said one part of it yeah well listen don we got some barbecue for you so uh we're tired of talking to you no you're great man but i know you got to be hungry i know you eat every hour yeah [ __ ] it's been a pleasure sir i really appreciate it i'm sorry you're awesome right rich i wanted to bring rich because you know when we go to a fight i i get tunnel vision you know so i only you know concentrate on 25 30 percent of what's going on you know rich is taking care of the other 70 percent you know rich or steve or somebody you know so you're missing seventy percent no listen what i got was gold what i got
was gold i'm telling you though rich got some good [ __ ] yeah well i'll talk to him sometimes you're gonna have to you have to come out to my house all right i would love to yeah where which part of arizona yeah tucson the next time i'm in tucson i'll come out i do geeks out there sometimes yeah i'm i'm just i'm in north tucson only like an hour away from phoenix okay mesa i'll make that happen yeah all right that'd be great don you're the [ __ ] man thank you brother thank you appreciate you very much man thank you thank you always a pleasure john fry ladies and gentlemen [Music]